Touch me, know me, feel me

First I thought there was an error in the heading: “Why Doctors Need Humanities”. After I read the article I was convinced that “Why Doctors Need to be Humane” would have been a more appropriate heading.

Reading the article made me wonder once again: Why do many prominent doctors and hospitals avoid palliative care like, well, the plague. They welcome the best talent and the best technology, but palliative care? “We cannot spare beds for that.”

To me, palliative care is synonymous with humane care. A hospital refusing to accommodate a facility for humane care is like a school saying we can give you reading and ‘riting, but no ‘rithmetic.

So, why have I have jumped from that Times of India article on Humanities to humane care? Precisely because that article deals with humane care.

Learn empathy with the -pathy
The problem, says the author, Professor Anand Krishnan, Centre for Community Medicine, All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences, is not that our doctors lack the scientific knowledge. The problem “is related to their insensitive behaviour which emanates from their ignorance as well as inability to handle the emotional distress of sick individuals and their near and dear ones. Doctors should not allow scientific medicine to blunt their humanity, ignore ethics and the need for empathy.”

Professor Krishnan laments that “A typical consultation today is of less than ten minutes and consists of a few cursory questions followed by a long list of investigations and medicines to be taken with poor explanation of (the) whys and hows.”

The death of E Ahamed, a Parliamentarian, kicked up a veritable why-how storm in both political and medical circles. Did they use the right equipment at the right time? Was the family denied access when it mattered most?

Instead of resuscitating that controversy, let us take note of what Dr M R Rajagopal, widely acclaimed as the father of palliative care in India, had to say following Ahamed’s death, as reported by The Deccan Chronicle: “Science has to be used on human beings with humanity. Death is the inevitable consequence of life, and there is a time at which a gentle touch of a loved one, a few drops of water down the throat and religious rituals become more important than the latest technology.”